That 4 AM blind lift near the Port of Houston almost went sideways

Back in 2017 I was running a lattice boom doing a night shift unload off a barge. Fog rolled in so thick you couldnt see the shackle let alone the load. My spotter kept saying he had it but I could tell his voice was shaky. I set the load down blind on the deck and it landed crooked, tipped one of the steel coils right off the side into the water. Nobody got hurt but the client was furious, we had to send divers out. After that I told the super no more lifts unless I got a clear line of sight or radar. Has anyone else had to shut down a job over weather conditions that the office wanted to push through?

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abbyg146d ago

The thing nobody talks about is how the office folks pushing these lifts have never actually stood at the controls when you can't see past the boom tip. They see a schedule and a dollar figure, you see a steel coil going into the drink. I started keeping a log of every time I refused a lift and what the weather was doing, wind speed, visibility, all of it. Month later when they tried to write me up for "delaying operations" I handed over three pages showing a pattern of them ignoring fog advisories. Funny how fast that write up disappeared. Paper trail is your best friend out there because memory gets real fuzzy when lawyers get involved.

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